Free Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge Page A

prayer, Beatrice was all for opening the windows, the better to take in the sound. ‘How melodious,’ she murmured, though indeed the reverse was the case. Even the hotel, which was no more than a large house, considerably deficient in comforts, drew no complaints.
    It helped, I suppose, that we were all in the same boat, so to speak, for the town was swarming with English folk and we were never alone in our feverish activities. Casual acquaintances, of the sort who, in the sensible confines of our own country, would scarcely have rated a nod, leapt overnight into the category of bosom friend.
    ‘He’s surely a rogue,’ I complained to George, when he brought to our table in the Messieri Hotel a young man transparently disreputable. ‘You would have shunned him at home.’
    ‘We are not at home,’ George countered. ‘And I find him amusing.’
    ‘She has a reputation,’ I warned Beatrice, who, taking a lead from George, soon became on intimate terms with a Mrs Yardley, travelled out from England in the company of a colonel of the Guards. ‘She is plainly connected to that gentleman without the benefit of marriage vows.’ To which Beatrice tartly replied we were hardly in a position to throw the first stone. I confess she had me there.
    The military news was confusing. On our arrival we had been told of a glorious Turkish victory and assured that the danger of conflict was past, only to learn the following day that the Duke of Cambridge and Lord Raglan were at this moment on their way to Malta to make a declaration of war. There were many among us, profiteers all, Mr Naughton being a choice example, who hoped the latter story was the truth. Meanwhile, we continued on our merry round.
    Of all our numerous outings, the spectacle of the dancing dervishes remains most vividly in the mind, their performance being ridiculous in the extreme. It took place at Pera, in a small mosque adjacent to a harem. We were given seats in the gallery, from which we looked down on a circle of men garbed in long coats and wearing the sort of conical hats believed to be common to witches. In the centre sat a high priest, eyes closed as though he slept - and who could blame him? In the gallery opposite, a stout individual wearing a long beard and a silk dress decidedly feminine in design - Beatrice whispered she thought it divine - shook a tambourine and emitted a fierce howl whenever the fancy took him. For an hour or more we were subjected to a monotonous gabbling of prayers. Just as I was near swooning from boredom, the dervishes rose to their feet - they were immensely tall - cast off their outer garments and shoes and walked about, bowing ceremoniously to the priest and to each other. Then, at no apparent signal, they began spinning round and round. A more absurd sight could not be imagined, for they wore white petticoats and held their arms raised above their hats, so that they resembled huge revolving extinguishers. Efforts to suppress the hilarity raging through the gallery were far from successful.
    Afterwards, Annie, Beatrice and Mrs Yardley gained admittance to the harem, where they were received by a Madame Kiasim whose raven locks were dyed buttercup yellow and who was reported to have read a French novel throughout. No other women were visible. A slave shortly brought in glasses of water and a plate of sweetmeats, Madame Kiasim later demanding payment for this refreshment without once looking up from her book.
    In all this relentless gadding, this reckless bonhomie, I detected something of the hectic gaiety which must have prevailed during the last days of Rome. Like dervishes, we twirled from one diversion to another. At yet another picnic in the hills outside the town, the women’s chatter rising like the twitterings of starlings, a premonition of impending disaster took such a strong hold of me that I was forced to leave the group and walk to a pinnacle some distance off. As I gazed below, to where the domes and slender